A patient must usually take one or more medications in prescribed dosages and at certain time intervals. Various devices are known for assisting the patient in complying with his/her medical regimen. The most sophisticated devices are so-called medication dispensers, which dispense prepackaged and labelled medication packages to provide the patient with the proper dosage of medications at a prescribed time. The medications are prepackaged into packages according to the medical regimen of the patient, and are available from licensed pharmacies. The labels of the medication packages may contain information about the patient, the content of the package, and the date and time of the dosage.
Typically, the medication packages are arranged as a strip, which is inserted into a container of the medication dispenser either by the patient or a caregiver of the patient. The medication dispenser dispenses the packages by separating the packages from the strip one package at a time according to the information provided by the labels of the packages, or information stored in the medication dispenser. The medication dispenser allows the dispensation of medications to be monitored and controlled so that the patient, the caregiver or any other person having access to the apparatus can be assured that the patient is taking the medications as prescribed.
A problem associated with known medication dispensers, which dispense medication packages from a strip, relates to the filling of the dispensers. Because the dispensers are filled manually by a patient or a caregiver, there is always a risk of inserting a wrong strip into the medication dispenser, or a risk of inserting the strip into the medication dispenser in a wrong way. The known medication dispensers either do not have any functionality or are provided with insufficient means to ensure that the medication dispenser is filled correctly.